Monday, 8 November 2010

Caribbean Politics and St. Vincent

Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has defended estimates of damage caused to his country by Hurricane Tomas against accusation of exaggeration by his opposition, New Democratic Party. Anyone reading the article on antiguaobserver.com, http://www.antiguaobserver.com/?p=47287, may wonder if the opposition is making a genuine attempt to protect St Vincent's image or playing dirty politics. Other people, including myself would be peeved at the what seems to have become a practice of political parties in the Caribbean of criticizing their governments at every possible opportunity. Unfortunately political parties seems to forget that we all suffer from negative press.The Ruling Party, Opposition and the entire Nation, we all suffer.

In a world where information is no longer golden and available for all on the internet its imperative that politician develop an attitude of Country first and politics second. Just twenty years ago what was said on the political platform traveled no further than those gathered. Today political utterances live on forever and is read and sometimes replayed for generation. A quick look at You Tube would prove the point, political speeches of American President, Barrack Obama and those as old as Mohatma Ghandi's can be retrieved. Therefore if we are serious about presenting ourselves as an intelligent and politically mature people we must put away selfishness and promote our Caribbean as first in everything we do and say and our individual political ambitions second.

Let me hope this post is taken as a call for political maturity in the Caribbean and not an attack on New Democratic Party.